


150 Points

by empiricalis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Diary/Journal, Gen, Original Character(s), Quidditch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29600223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/empiricalis/pseuds/empiricalis
Summary: Alistair Wood was flying high, fresh off yet another Quidditch League Cup win with the Montrose Magpies. After 22 years playing Seeker for the Magpies, he felt like he could do it for 22 more. But in 1969, the Magpies front office made a decision that radically altered the course of his career.Inspired by the classic baseball stories Ball Four, Bull Durham, and Major League, 150 Points follows Alistair Wood through the 1969 season of the British Quidditch League. Alistair explores the Quidditch culture of the United Kingdom and the lifestyle of magical athletes through the lens of a player that has seen just about everything there is to see - or so he thinks.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

February 3rd, 1969

It’s not usually a good sign when the clubhouse is silent on the first day of the pre-season. 

It was the first time we were all together since October. Normally, the returning veterans would all be clustered together catching up with each other. The rookies - well, they would all be huddled together in a corner of the room, acting like someone had cast both silencing and body-binding curses on them. The room would be crackling with energy, with the excitement preceding the new season. Our confidence was almost like a physical thing you could feel in the air. We were the mighty Montrose Magpies, winners of 7 of the last 10 League Cups, and we were coming back for more. A fair bit of swagger to start the season was quite warranted.

Not so, this time. When I stepped out of the Floo, you could hear a pin drop. Not a soul present was looking in my direction. Even Ronnie, our beloved clubhouse ghost, perpetually jovial, looking to cause a laugh, found himself occupied when I arrived. Most of the players were conspicuously doing another activity; polishing their brooms, reviewing the playbook, testing the fit of their uniforms. The sinking feeling in my gut intensified as I walked to my locker, and nobody greeted me. It was like I had crashed a wake without my pants on.

When I got to my locker, I saw it - a tiny piece of paper that would change my career forever, simply saying, “Duncan’s office.” It was at that moment that I knew someone had died - and it was me.

***

I feel like I should explain some of our colourful language. For a Quidditch player to die, one of two things happened:

  1. They literally died. This is a sport in which we fly around at high speeds hundreds of feet in the air, trying not to get killed. Some players are less successful at this than others.
  2. A player was cut from the team. Each team carries 21 players during the pre-season, so 11 players end up searching for a new job. I remember one fellow during the 1951 preseason that died, and then died. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out the order.



***

I dropped my bag in my locker and grabbed the note with a trembling hand. I had been the starting seeker on the Magpies for the last 22 years. I held just about every seeking record in the team’s long history. We won last year’s League Cup off of a spectacular one-handed, diving catch that I made during a thunderstorm. 

I wasn’t ready for it to end. Not now.

I stood in front of my locker for what felt like an eternity, staring at the note. My stupor was broken when I heard the door to the manager’s office open and the rough voice of Duncan cut through the fog. 

“Al? Come inside.”

As I shuffled my way towards him, my mind raced with the possibilities. There were 14 teams in Britain and Ireland. Probably six of them needed a new seeker. The Harpies were out - they only signed women. Puddlemere didn’t often sign veterans. I had too much dignity to sign with Chudley. Caerphilly’s manager and I didn’t get along in school, which was mostly my fault. (I once vanished his trousers during a presentation he was giving in Potions.) That left Kenmare and Falmouth. Hell, maybe I can talk my way out of this. Agree to take a pay cut and stay on, maybe rotate starts with the kid. It had been done before.

“Alistair?”

It didn’t help my case that I wasn’t paying attention to whatever Duncan was saying to me.

“Sorry, Duncan,” I replied. “What’s going on?”

“Now, Al, you’ve been here a long time and you know this isn’t easy for me to do,” he said. 

Yep, I was definitely dead. I’ve heard this speech before, told to countless hopefuls that were sent packing. 

“I’m being released?” I asked. 

“No, no. We’ve sold your contract. The owners are looking to save some galleons this season. The kid’s on his first contract, so they want to see what he can do. You know how it is these days,” he said, with a disarming sort of gesture. 

Oh no. No, no, no, no, no. I was the second highest-paid seeker in the league - 2,000 galleons per season. There weren’t that many teams that would want to buy my contract.

“Who… who bought it?”

“Have you got your wand on you, Al?”

“Of course.”

“Before I tell you, please put your wand on the table. I don’t have the urge to be cursed this morning.”

I was tempted to hex him right then and there, I really was. If I did that, though, I’d be done. Turning your manager into a frog and dropping him off in the bog tends to get you banned from the league. I know this because in 1946, an angry veteran did exactly that to Chudley’s manager. Nobody really blamed the player for it.

I pulled my wand out from its holster and put it on the table. 

“Yes, fine, where am I going?”

Duncan took a deep breath and eyed my wand on the table, likely gauging whether or not he could reach for it before me. 

“Chudley.”

Of course. Of course it’s fucking Chudley.

***

For those of you not in the know, the Chudley Cannons were a pathetic excuse for a Quidditch team. If the Cannons played Muggle football, they would have been relegated to Sunday league. They hadn’t won the League Cup since 1892. They hadn’t had a top-half finish since 1914. The only reason the team was allowed to exist is that the rest of the league enjoyed having a bunch of free wins on their schedule every year. The only players they could sign were desperate, dead-end veterans and naïve rookies that thought they could turn the team around. 

They had me, now, too. Not sure where I fell in.

***

“Chudley,” I repeated numbly. 

“Here, they’re waiting for you,” Duncan said, passing me a sheet of parchment. 

“This is a portkey to their training grounds. They’ve got a new manager. You’ll like him. Smart kid. I think he can really turn them around.”

“Every manager thinks they can turn the Cannons around. The last guy went 2-98 while he was there and he was the best they’ve had in 20 years,” I said. 

“Hey, their luck has gotta turn at some point. Maybe you’re just what they need,” he said, standing up and handing me back my wand, clearly dismissing me.

“Thanks for everything you’ve done here. Once you decide to hang up the broomstick for good, let me know, and we’ll see about a coaching job for you. You’ve earned it.”

I shook his hand in disbelief. 

“That may come sooner than you think,” I mumbled. 

***

Quidditch players are, as a rule, superstitious as hell. It doesn’t help that we’re all magical folk, so our superstitions can get pretty intense. Andy Johnson was a great chaser with the Magpies in the ‘50s, and his pregame ritual was literally to draw a ritual circle on the locker room floor with his own blood, and chant phrases in a language that none of us knew. The rules don’t say that you can’t do it, after all, and Andy won Chaser of the Year 3 times. Maybe if I had done blood magic I’d still be a Magpie. Oh well. The crystal ball always works when it’s backwards.

***

When a player gets cut, nobody wants to be seen to be too friendly with them lest they end up getting cut as well. When a player gets traded to Chudley, though, they may as well have a bad case of dragon pox for how they’re treated by their former teammates. The path was completely clear from Duncan’s office to my locker. I saw a couple of people taking furtive glances in my direction, but otherwise giving me a wide berth. If I’d had had my wits about me, I’d have walked up to them to see them squirm. 

I flicked my wand and summoned my bag. One last look at my cowardly former teammates, and the place where I had spent the last 22 years of my life. The walls of the clubhouse were festooned with moving images of our successes, many of them mine. Would they keep those images up? Or would I be obliviated from the collective memories of the team?

As Duncan said, I was, unfortunately, well acquainted with the business. What a player did for the team yesterday is irrelevant - what are they gonna do tomorrow? More importantly, how much is it gonna cost the owner? The answer for me, apparently, was “too much.”

Maybe one day I’ll take Duncan up on his offer to return as a coach. It’s equally likely that I will, one day, get drunk and burn the place to the ground. We’ll see how this season goes.

With a tap of my wand on the portkey, I was off to join my new team. 

My name is Alistair Wood. Newest member of the Chudley Cannons. 

God help me.


	2. Chapter 2

February 3rd, 1969

You can get a good sense for the character of a Quidditch club by its clubhouse. Every club is required to have its facilities far away from any muggles who might stumble upon it - thank the Statute of Secrecy for that - and is also required to keep their facilities from standing out too much. That doesn’t mean that clubs can’t have any of their own flair, though. Montrose’s clubhouse resembled an old Scottish castle. Holyhead - never been inside, no men allowed - had an imposing Gothic motif. Portree took over an old distillery and made the most of it. I had never been to Chudley’s clubhouse. Once the portkey dropped me off in front, I understood why.

It appeared to be an old chapel that had been neglected for centuries. The stonework on the outside was crumbling, all the windows were broken, and weeds grew untamed as far as I could see. My only clue that I was in the right place was the Quidditch practice field on the other side of the chapel - six tall goal rings in an oval field. If the goal was to make it look absolutely uninteresting to passing muggles, they fully succeeded. 

I made my way up the overgrown path to the front door of the chapel, and gently pushed the large, creaky door open. The room inside was very dimly lit, and I saw some quick motion out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t exactly what you would call a duelist, so I almost shit myself rather than doing something smart like pull out my wand. Once my eyes adjusted to the low light inside, I saw the offending creature. 

It was me. I was dressed in a Chudley Cannons uniform, with a broom in one hand. The image of me looked haggard, like it hadn’t shaved in a month, with bleary red eyes. It was clearly out of shape. Depressed. I stared at it in disbelief. It pulled a piece of parchment out of its robe labeled “Quidditch Hall of Fame”, which began to smolder in its hand. Was this thing a vision of my own future? There had been rumors that the Cannons were cursed for decades. Now I wondered if it was true and the club actually was suffering under a curse.

I heard someone shout “Riddikulus!” from the distance, and the image of me shifted into that of a rapidly deflating red balloon, which flew out of sight. The caster of the spell quickly came into view, and waved his wand to light up the room a bit more. He was a tall, thin man, breathing heavily. Looked pretty young. I figured he was one of the team staff members who was to bring me to their new manager once I arrived.

“Alistair!” he exclaimed. “I’m so pleased to meet you! I’m Sunil, the new manager. Come inside, let’s talk,” he said, motioning me inside. This was the new manager? Duncan had mentioned that he was young, but I wasn’t expecting someone who looked like they passed their NEWTs last week.

“Sorry about the boggart. I don’t know how to get rid of it, and it’s been here for as long as anyone can remember,” he said.

I winced. Of course it was a boggart. I’m not sure if it’s more pathetic that I didn’t realize that, or that my greatest fear was myself as a member of this team.

“You saw what it was?” I asked cautiously.

“Oh, yeah. Don’t worry about it. Happens all the time,” he replied as we walked through the main room of the clubhouse. It was surprisingly tasteful, considering everything else I’d seen. 

The back wall had all the lockers, organized by name. Off to one side appeared to be a very well-equipped bar with an animated suit of armor behind it. The other side of the room looked like a small gym, with weights, ropes, and other exercise equipment. The center had some comfortable looking chairs and tables, where a few young-looking players were chatting over tea. 

“You look surprised,” Sunil said.

“This looks nice. I wasn’t sure what to expect,” I replied.

He motioned around the room in general.

“I spent the entire offseason working on this room. Everything you see I either conjured or transfigured from what was here before. This is just the start, Alistair, I’m telling you. This is a new Chudley Cannons we’re building here,” he said excitedly, leading me to his office off to the side of the clubhouse. 

Sunil’s office clearly hadn’t had the same treatment as the main room. It looked as if a volcano had erupted and spewed paperwork all over the place. 

“Have a seat, have a seat,” he said, gesturing at a chair that looked like it would collapse if I breathed on it. I gingerly sat down and felt it protest underneath me.

“So, before we talk any further, I wanted to let you know that I’ve been a big fan of yours for a long time. The first game I ever saw in person was in 1954, I was six years old then, Montrose against Ballycastle, and you caught the snitch while being hit by both bludgers at the same time,” he said.

“I forgot about that game,” I said dryly. It was true. I had forgotten about that game, in part because one bludger had smashed my head and the other one broke all of my ribs while I was in the process of catching the snitch. Our beaters weren’t great that season.

“Anyway, as I said, I’m a big fan of yours, and we needed a new seeker, so when Montrose posted your contract I bought it immediately, because I knew that you’re exactly what this team needs to be great again,” he said excitedly. 

“What happened to the last seeker?” I asked him.

“Oh, there was a mishap with her and one of the beaters, it’s fine, she’s in St. Mungo’s now in recovery, we’re gonna make sure she comes out of it alright, and don’t worry, I cut all the old players and fired all the coaches once I took over, so we’re starting fresh. It’s gonna be great,” he said.

Oh, right. I had heard about this. One of Chudley’s beaters whacked a bludger at his own seeker rather than the opposing seeker. She never saw it coming and was very badly hurt. 

“I know you didn’t ask to come here and you don’t want to be here,” he continued. “Good players never do. All I’m asking is for you to give me - give this club a chance. I really think we can build something here. The new owners are willing to put galleons on the table to make it happen.”

That was the first I’d heard of new owners.

***  
Quidditch team owners fall into one of two categories. First, there are the fans that got rich and just want to pal around the clubhouse with the players. They’re not usually interested in meddling too much with the team, which is both good and bad. Montrose’s previous owner was like that. When times were good, he let us do our thing, but when they weren’t so good, he refused to make hard decisions and let the team rot. His family came into some money troubles in the mid-1960s and sold the team. That brings me to the second group - the tight-fisted feudal overlords. For them, Quidditch is an exercise in collecting galleons first, second, and third. Montrose’s new owners were the reason that I ended up in Chudley.  
***

“Look, Sunil, I appreciate why you brought me here, but you have to understand. I’m 41 years old. I’ve been in the league for 22 years. I don’t really see myself playing out the rest of my career here,” I explained gently.

“Who said anything about the rest of your career?”

“There are 3 years left on my contract. I intend to retire at the end of it.”

He leaned back, speechless for the first time since I’d met him. I feared the structural integrity of the chair.

“I understand now. You want to make the Hall of Fame,” he declared.

I nodded. The Quidditch Hall of Fame required 25 seasons of professional play for a seeker to be eligible. When my last contract with Montrose was close to expiring 3 years ago, I specifically signed a 6-year extension so that I would retire at an even 25. My hope was that he would understand my predicament. Faffing about with a hopeless Chudley club for the last 3 years of my career would mean that the feckless ghouls in charge of the Hall of Fame would certainly forget me.

“Don’t you think that making the Cannons great can only help your candidacy? You’ve played on some incredibly loaded Magpies teams. This is where you can prove that you can elevate a team around you and be more than just a seeker,” he said confidently.

“I could also get killed by my own beater.”

“You run that risk every time you get on your broom. Come on, let’s have you meet the players and coaches. You’ll want to stick around and see this through, I promise.”

I didn’t have the heart to argue with him more at that moment. I also didn’t want to be sitting in that chair any longer.

“Everyone, gather round, gather round!” I heard Sunil shout. The other players got up from whatever it is that Chudley players do and assembled near us. A ghost floated in from the outside towards the crowd. Lots of clubs have ghosts hanging out around them. I was expecting Chudley to have a poltergeist or three to go along with the boggart. The day was still young.

“Everybody, this is Alistair Wood. He is the very best seeker in this league, and with him backing us up there’s no telling how far we can go. Come introduce yourselves,” he said.

The ghost charged ahead of the other players and cut in first. 

“Mr. Wood, I have heard so much of your achievements on the pitch! My name is Sir William Trentingham. I have centuries of experience around this magnificent game of ours, and this season I shall be acting as the seekers’ coach! By God, with your talents and my inspiring leadership, there’s not a snidget in Britain that will end up in the grasp of our foes!” the ghost exclaimed.

“Snidget?” I asked.

“Hey, Sir William, we’ll see you during practice, alright? Let’s let Alistair meet the rest of the team first,” Sunil said nervously, waving the ghost out.

“I shall prepare for practice, then!” Sir William said, vanishing.

I looked over at Sunil. He refused to return my look. Not a great start.

“Come on, don’t be shy, let’s introduce ourselves!” he said.

The next couple minutes were a blur of names and faces that I had no chance of remembering. There was a common theme, though: young. Every single one of these kids was either a rookie or had been let go from another team early in their career. Most of them looked at me with some level of awe, though a couple didn’t seem to care one way or another. I’d have to get to know them.

The seemingly never-ending introductions were mercifully interrupted by a shout, crash, and explosion from the front room where I came in. Someone else must have arrived and found the boggart.

“Shit!” Sunil yelled. He ran off to the room we came in from. 

I heard a muffled scream of “Riddikulus!” from the entryway. What poor sap had he acquired this time? I counted the player heads in the room and came to 20, so whoever just encountered the welcoming committee was our last player. 

The new person entered the room, and I recognized him immediately. Short, wiry, with an unmistakable mustache - it could only be one person.

“French!” I shouted.

***  
Guillaume ‘French’ Blondeau played chaser for Montrose in the early ‘60s. In the ‘50s he tore up the French League with Deauville. During the European Cup in 1959, he single-handedly scored 27 goals against us and knocked us out of the tournament. Montrose’s Gringotts vault was overflowing at that point, so the team bought his contract before the next season. We won the League Cup 3 times in a row after he joined us. He eventually signed with Wimbourne and we fell out of touchj. Why was his nickname “French”? It’s because he’s from France. We aren’t especially creative with the nicknames.  
***

I don’t know that anyone has ever been happier to see me in my entire life, and that includes my eager new manager. French went from despair to happiness in an instant.

He ditched Sunil and darted over to greet me. The kids surrounding us looked confused. I don’t think they knew who he was, either.

“You too?” I asked him.

“They told me once I showed up to practice this morning,” he said. “I am glad to see a friendly face in my darkest hour, mon frère.”

“Me too, mate, me too.” 

Sunil, wanting to assert some control, clapped his hands to get our attention. Rude.

“Alright, time for reunions later. Get dressed and head out onto the field! Let’s get this started!” he said.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. French was one of the best I’ve ever played with. With him leading the chasers, they might be able to keep games within 150 points so that I can steal some wins here and there. I can see the story in the Prophet’s sports section: “Wood and Blondeau Revitalize Cannons.” My Hall of Fame candidacy might still be alive.

Maybe. Best not to get ahead of myself. Our first practice was about to start.


End file.
